Kitchen Large Electric Appliances - age of clothes washer?

Does anyone have an idea how old a Hotpoint washer, model WLW3700B, is? I have the manual and operating instructions, such as they are, but there's not a date on them.

I can't remember when I bought it and it's going to need repairs-- not sure what yet --- and I'd like to know if it's worth sinking any money at all into.

Thanks.

jo

Look on the same tag as the model number, look for the serial number. Usually the first two digits of the serial number are the year of manufacture. For example; G82xxxxx would be built in 82.

If you're not sure what repairs it's going to need, what are the symptoms? Leaking, noisy, not filling, not draining, etc? We thought we were going to need to replace ours about a month ago because it was leaking. Really hated to replace it as it's only 22 years old. We thought about it and looked a little closer and "fixed" it ourselves with about 2 minutes work and a big paper clip.

Good luck

Frank

Hi Frank,

Unfortunately, my serial # (SR14553H) doesn't reflect a year. I found the model on the Hotpoint site, but it doesn't seem to give the year anywhere, alto it does have some schematics. Frankly I think I probably want to get a new model, rather than have to.

I can't explain the problem well, because there are multiple issues, but the main one is that the agitator isn't working right. The lock/unlock mechanism isn't working at all. I've taken apart everything I can see to take apart and can't even figure out how the mechanism should work! Then, from the Hotpoint site, it looks like if I were trying to do a delicate cycle, I should remove all but some center gizmo of the agitator. Weeeellll, that center part has a screw in it, which I took out, and for the life of me, I can't see a way to take out the agitator and leave that in. I don't think it's ever come out separately.

Then there is the problem that the washer leaves soap in the clothes and i have to run an extra rinse/ spin cycle to get the remnants out. It's not because I'm using too much detergent because I'm barely using 1/2 of the recomended amount already. I don't know whether its always been doing this, but I started noticing it about a year ago.

It's also terrible with load balancing. Trys to walk across the tiny space of my back shed making horrible noises if I do any large loads, like towels. Hasn't caused a problem yet, but I keep wondering when it's going to pull the hoses off the back and cause a flood, or fall thru the poorly supported floor of this shed which was built on top of a small, inaccessible crawl space long before i got here.

I guess I should try to call Hotpoint/GE and see if they can answer some basic questions. If I had to guess, this is about 10 years old, and I happened to stroll thru the appliance section of some big box store recently and saw how much washing technology has changed [or how advertising makes it appear] , which gave me a bad case of new applicance lust. I don't need 15 different settings, but a few more than I have would be nice, especially if they really worked. The drier was in the house when I bought it, making it at least 25 years old, and it has almost no controls except "dry hot" and I worry about it being a fire hazard. Am thinking about replacing that at the same time, as an Xmas present to myself. I call it preventive purchasing, sort of like getting a new computer every 4-5 years :}

Seriously though, if you know anything about these center post agitators and how they come apart and lock, etc, I would like to learn more, so I can judge whether I'm just indulging myself or throwing good money away. I'm not even sure if it's agitating at all. Can I tell, given that when I raise the lid, the cycle shuts off?

Thanks,

jo

[Saturday- I reached a GE/Hotpoint customer support person who was able to tell from my serial number that this is an 8 year old washer. I suppose it could be what they are told to say but he felt that I would be wasting money fixing the agitator between the service and parts cost]